[pas de résumé] / Jean Charbonnel was part of that generation of "young wolves", sponsored by Georges Pompidou, which - from the beginning of the 1960s - embarked on the conquest of those parts of the country that were hostile to Gaullism. That was how Jean Charbonnel succeeded in being elected a "député" in a part of the Corrèze that was "radical-socialiste", in which the initial contacts with local politics were more than difficult. With that victory on which to build, Jean Charbonnel made for himself a real stronghold in the south of the department (the "Pays de Brive") where he became a "conseiller général" (1964-1968), mayor of Brive (1966-1995), the initiator of the first forms of "intercommunalité", and a deputy for a total of fifteen years. With this base of practical experience on the ground, his Gaullism became clearly orientated towards a search for, and the defence of, a better social justice through the realisation of novel mechanisms whose aim was the integration of handicapped schoolchildren, and of young people into the world of work, or through the responsibility that was taken for older members of the community with the construction of "foyers-logements" (sheltered housing). Such local social action was echoed on the national level, particularly when Jean Charbonnel became "Ministre du Développement industriel et scientifique" (1972-1974), within the context of the "affaire Lipp" when he tried to obtain true recognition for the eminently "gaullien" principle of Participation, taking into account the interests of the workers, of the salaried employees and of the management. Jean Charbonnel's political action claimed to be resolutely progressive but above all reformist as it sought to associate the citizen - according to the place that he actually occupied within the Community - with the great reforms of the country. This thesis seeks therefore to comprehend how a Gaullist managed to establish himself in a left-wing area - the "Pays de Brive" -and the way in which his action made of him a left-wing Gaullist or rather a "gaulliste social" because he was intellectually nearer the Right than the Left, and above all because he never sought to break away from mainstream gaullism, by which he was quite different from the left-wing Gaullists